These tangy, spicy little snacks are just the job for a quick lunch or as part of a tapas spread and they transport you from the depths of an English winter to summer in Spain. I make the red pepper sauce so often, here and in Catalunya, that it’s become known in the family as Salsa Linda. Continue reading
Hollandaise sauce is one of those things that can strike fear into the heart of even the most experienced cook. Get the temperature wrong or turn your back for a minute and you can end up with a curdled mess. Continue reading
This recipe comes with a health warning … massa de pimentão, or Portuguese red pepper paste, is culinary crack. Once you’ve sampled it, there’s no going back. Continue reading
I was once whizzing down from the top of a mountain in Argentina in a rather antiquated cable car when its operator fixed with me an evil grin and said: “Remember the Malvinas!” Fortunately for me he was only joking and in spite of any lingering feelings (on either side) about the Falklands War I met with nothing but warmth and friendship as I travelled around the country.
For a month I lived almost entirely on steak. Continue reading
Cooking terms can be stupidly confusing sometimes and if you have a recipe that calls for a béchamel or roux, you might wonder what the difference is. Continue reading
Tomatoes peeled and chopped and ready to be made into sauce
This is an enormously useful and versatile sauce to have in your arsenal: eat it simply stirred through pasta, serve it with meatballs, chops or sausages, cook it until it’s thicker and use it as a pizza topping, thin it down and eat it as a soup. Continue reading
A gorgeously gloopy saffron allioli
We’ve all reached for a jar of shop-bought mayonnaise but making your own is well worth the effort. It’s a different animal, rich, unctuous and utterly delicious. Continue reading
Picture by Colin Houston
Nothing says Springtime to me like lamb and a minty salsa verde. This is the sort of meal you want to come home to after a walk in a bluebell wood on a sunny day, with birds singing merrily overhead as they flit around building nests and squirrels playing hide and seek in the trees. If you lack bluebells, sunshine and obliging Disney-style wildlife, cook this, close your eyes and dream of better things to come.
I used lamb rump here but you can just as easily use chops or lamb steaks. And there are many variations on salsa verde Continue reading
This is a variation on a favourite theme – salmon fillets with a herby, lemony, cream sauce. Sometimes I fry the fish but mostly I bake it. Often I use parsley and chives but this time I chucked in plenty of dill because I like its fragrant aniseedy taste with salmon. Continue reading
Quince is one of my favourite fruits, which is fortunate as we’ve had a bumper harvest this year and I literally can’t give them away. Seriously, I’ve been putting out tweets begging people to take some. This is probably infuriating to read if you live in London or somewhere else where quince are only available at vast expense from upscale food markets. What can I say? Move to Suffolk and you can have some of mine next year. Of course next year I’ll probably only get three wizened fruits, which will serve me right.
Quince partners duck very well, its perfumed sharpness cutting through the rich fattiness of the bird. I’ve used it three ways in this recipe Continue reading